The fun and light-heartedness of a wedding party. Then, terror and disbelief. All captured in two amateur videos shot by the passengers of the “Tortuga”, the sailing ship used for exclusive events which on Thursday afternoon was involved in the dramatic accident that occurred in the body of water in front of the Fiordo di Furore, on the Amalfi Coast. To lose your life Adrienne Vaughan, 45enne statunitense e presidente del Bloomsbury Usa, American subsidiary of Bloomsbury Publishing, the British publishing house that edited the novels of Harry Potter.
The woman was on a goiter which violently impacted the sailing ship: with her, her husband Mike, who was slightly injured, her 12-year-old daughter and her 8-year-old son, unharmed.
“The children are in the hotel because their grandfather has arrived in Italy. Hospitality was also offered in a family home but the methods of custody of the two children were agreed with the father”, said the prosecutor Giuseppe Borrelli this morning speaking of Vaughan’s two minor children. “At first the services intervened of the municipality of Amalfi, then there was an appropriate constant dialogue with the father of the children to establish any urgent measures to be taken but then a certain path was agreed which seems to me to have been productive”. Furthermore, it is not yet clear if the Public Prosecutor’s Office decides to hear the two minors as well.
The driver of the boat, a 30-year-old from Campania, tested positive for toxicological tests: he would have started driving the boat – rented by the American family from a company in Massa Lubrense – under the influence of cocaine.
“The skipper of the motorboat underwent an alcohol and toxicological test. I won’t go into the results but I want to say that the results are being examined by a consultant from the Public Prosecutor’s Office because it will be necessary to verify the impact of the results on the subject under investigation and, therefore, their causal efficacy on the accident”, underlined Borrelli. Therefore, further investigations will be needed to understand, possibly, how long ago the possible consumption of drugs can be traced back.
The Salerno prosecutor’s office is working on two crime hypotheses – manslaughter and manslaughter – in the investigation into the accident at sea, prosecutor Borrelli added, underlining that so far they have been in the investigation listen to over 70 peopleincluding the victim’s husband hospitalized who will be heard again as soon as his health conditions improve.
From the images recorded by the passengers of the “Tortuga” – which ended up on the net and went viral – it is possible to retrace the moments immediately following the tragedy: the music on board the sailing ship is suddenly lowered, the dances and laughter stop and the despondency takes over windward. “Oh my God”, shouts more than one passenger, looking out on the port side of the boat and seeing the goiter destroyed in the impact. A disaster that marred the marriage of a foreign couple who had chosen to celebrate aboard the “Tortuga” and which, above all, transformed the American family’s holidays in Italy into a tragedy. After visiting Rome, the four Americans had decided to stay on the Amalfi Coast.
And Thursday afternoon they had decided to take a trip out to sea. The dynamics of the accident have not yet been disclosed, but it seems that the boat was proceeding at high speed when the crash occurred. The Public Prosecutor of Salerno has opened an investigation and is reconstructing the story, delegating the investigations to the soldiers of the Port Authority, who have already heard several witnesses and acquired the videos. What can be said right now is that the impact between the goiter on which they were traveling with the Tortuga, a 45-metre sailing ship on which there were about 80 foreign passengers, was extremely violent. Tony Gallo, commander of the Tortuga, tells Fanpage.it: “About 500 meters off the coast, a boat coming in the opposite direction suddenly reverses course at a speed between 20 and 25 knots, literally cutting our way and therefore going to impact under our bow.
At the time of impact my boat had stopped engines. The other, as can also be seen from the videos delivered to the judiciary, still had the propeller engaged, even after the impact”. Vaughan, who had become president of Bloomsbury Publishing about two years ago, a well-known manager in the world of publishing industry, ended up in the water near the propellers, suffering deep and serious injuries.She was first rescued by two doctors who were on board the sailing ship and then taken to Amalfi with a passing motorboat, but she didn’t make it . Husband Mike suffered a shoulder contusion and some wounds for which he was treated, together with his two children (who remained unharmed) at the hospital in Ravello. The driver of the goiter, on the other hand, reported an infringement the fracture of some ribs. The skipper is in the emergency room of the Salerno hospital where, as per practice, he underwent toxicological tests. Which gave positive results. Now the decisions of the judicial authorities are awaited.
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